(Walking past a store window we regularly walk by, MB is looking at himself. I bust him as I frequently like to do.)
ME: Good Lord. You can’t get enough of you.
HE: It was just a glance!
ME: (as I am fixing my hair whilst, yes, glancing in the car window): Yeah. A loving glance.
HE: This from the woman who just looked at herself in the car window!
ME: Ohh. Well. That was a critical glance. Yours are like mmmmm ….. yummmmy …..
HE: Oh, brother.
ME: It’s true!
HE: Well, I guess I just like to be a celebrant.
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(After finally finishing all the leftovers and frozen leftovers from the 20-pound ham that he — the ham-aholic — purchased during the holidays for, you know, the two of us.)
HE (in all seriousness): I’m really starting to miss the ham and beans. It was a part of our lives for so long.
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HE: Okay. Here is a list of the worst places in America.
ME: Oooh, really? Okay. Good. Let’s hear it.
HE: Okay. Rite-Aid ……. CVS drugstores ….. Denny’s …… any kind of Coco’s ……
ME: Wait. You said “places.” These are businesses.
HE: Oh, they’re places. They’re places!
ME: Wow. You feel strongly about this.
HE: I do!
ME: So those four?
HE: Yep. Worst places in America.
ME: But “Any kind of Coco’s”? Aren’t they all the same?
HE (in a fury of disgust): Any kind of Coco’s!!!!!
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So we’re at a Coco’s with my parents after a really strange Christmas program at their megachurch, celebrating the birth of baby Jesus with a dancing Frosty the Snowman and a sad-sack Henry Wadsworth Longfellow miming depression. Surreal.
MB wants to kill himself. My parents want pie. Dad likes to save money.
DAD (to waiter): Okay. Give us a whole blueberry pie and cut it into five pieces.
WAITER: Okay.
DAD: Put the last piece in a box and we’ll take it home.
WAITER: All right.
DAD: We all want ice cream, so put ice cream on the other four pieces.
WAITER: Got it. Okay.
He walks away. Long pause.
ME: How do you cut a pie into five pieces?
Even longer pause as the other three just stare at me, open-mouthed, gobsmacked.
And, honestly, pippa, I still struggle with this question.